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Thomas Barlow-Coxon, founder and director of Newcastle-under-Lyme Community Orchestra, provides an insight into the early days of his group's Adopt a Music Creator 2020/21 partnership with Charlotte Marlow.
Last October, we held the NULCO AGM a little later than usual due to Covid-19. Via Zoom, we announced that we had been selected to be part of Making Music’s Adopt a Music Creator 2020/21 project, which has paired us up with the fabulous composer Charlotte Marlow and mentor Colin Riley. Our members are all really excited and up for the challenge, which also coincides with NULCO’s five-year anniversary!
In November, members held a ‘Meet and Greet’ with Charlotte via Zoom, and she set some nice introductory tasks to get to know us, such as going for a walk and recording any interesting sounds we came across. 
There have been a lot of challenges, like understanding the Covid-19 rules for venues and in-person rehearsals. In the end, we just concentrated on compiling a Christmas concert by recording our own parts, which were brought together in a concert format by a talented member and then publicized on the NULCO website.
We are now starting a new term, and will be trying out online rehearsals and small repertoires in the coming months, as well as preparing for our summer anniversary concert in whatever environment we may find ourselves. Hopefully we will be performing a piece or two of Charlotte’s!
Look out for our next blog in April.
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The Adopt a Music Creator project matches vocal and instrumental leisure-time music groups with some of the UK’s most promising music creators to collaborate on creating a new piece of music. The project leads to a premiere performance and possible broadcast. If you’re a music group or music creator and you’d like to take part, find out more
